Days of Wine and Roses

My husband loves to grow roses and I love to display roses. I have collected wine bottles from France for many years and enjoy using them as flower containers. The rosé bottles are really fun with his roses in them. While in Napa this spring, we found a wonderful winery near Los Gatos, that had fabulous bottles - instead of a paper label, they simply wrote the contents of the bottle on the glass with a gold pen. After enjoying a bottle of their rosé, it now stands with my bottles from France. We have this old wild rose - with tons of thorns, but beautiful leaves and simple little raspberry blossoms. It looks perfect in this wine bottle. I keep this grouping in the window of my butler's pantry, as it adds color to my collection of old pressed glass.

One of my friends keeps all the wine bottles from special occasions, and marks the date and occasion on them with a gold pen - how cool is that?- You could use them later as flower containers for a special anniversary party or family reunion and re-live all your memories.